Masculine virile

Masculine virile is an issue relating to verbs and/or nouns in some languages, such as Polish, which refer to male humans but not male animals. These forms are irregular and rather conventional, to be memorized,[1] akin to masculine/feminine distiction in German grammar. They are therefore not to be confused with mere animacy.

Polish language

In Polish, for the word Murzyn that can be translated into English as "Black man", the standard nominative plural is Murzyni, which is using the "personal masculine" suffix, while the impersonal suffix (that is: Murzyny) is pejorative, because it puts Black men in the same (grammatic) category as animals.[2][3]

In Polish one would say to a group of animals, girls or adult women "Co zrobiłyście?" ("What did you do?"), but "Co zrobiliście?" to a group of boys or men.

Czech language

There is a distinction in the use of plural possessive suffixes '-ovi'/'ovy'. If the possessed objects are masculine animate, then 'ovi' is used, otherwise 'ovy', keping in mind that abstract terms are treated as inanimate, even though they may refer to (categories of) persons, while deceased persons are still animate. Examples:[4]

References

  1. ↑ "Slavic Languages". Archived from the original on 2016-10-09. Retrieved 2017-02-19.
  2. ↑ Mills, Margaret H., ed. (1999). Slavic gender linguistics. John Benjamins. p. 210. ISBN 9027250758. Retrieved 2013-04-23.
  3. ↑ Katamba, Francis (2004). Morphology: Morphology: Primes, phenomena and processes. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780415270809.
  4. ↑ Jaká jsou pravidla pro -ovi a -ovy?
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